Human Vices and Human Worth in Dante's Comedy

Human Vices and Human Worth in Dante's Comedy
Author: Patrick Boyde
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2006-06
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780521026659

Patrick Boyde brings Dante's thought and poetry into focus for the modern reader by restoring the Comedy to its intellectual and literary context in 1300. He begins by describing the authorities that Dante acknowledged in the field of ethics and the modes of thought he shared with the great thinkers of his time. After giving a clear account of the differing approaches and ideals embodied in Aristotelian philosophy, Christianity and courtly literature, Boyde concentrates on the poetic representation of the most important vices and virtues in the Comedy. He stresses the heterogeneity and originality of Dante's treatment, and the challenges posed by his desire to harmonize these divergent value-systems. The book ends with a detailed case study of the 'vices and worth' of Ulysses in which Boyde throws light on recent controversies by deliberately remaining within the framework of the thirteenth-century assumptions, methods and concepts explored in previous chapters.

The Divine Comedy

The Divine Comedy
Author: Dante Alighieri
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 831
Release: 2013-02-26
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1101608382

This beautiful hardcover edition–containing all three cantos, Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso–includes an introduction by Nobel Prize-winning poet Eugenio Montale, a chronology, notes, and a bibliography. Also included are forty-two drawings selected from Botticelli's marvelous late-fifteenth-century series of illustrations. The Divine Comedy begins in a shadowed forest on Good Friday in the year 1300. It proceeds on a journey that, in its intense recreation of the depths and the heights of human experience, has become the key with which Western civilization has sought to unlock the mystery of its own identity. Allen Mandelbaum’s astonishingly Dantean translation, which captures so much of the life of the original, renders whole for us the masterpiece of that genius whom our greatest poets have recognized as a central model for all poets. Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Everyman’s Library Classics include an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author's life and times.

Inventing Modernity in Medieval European Thought, ca. 1100–ca. 1550

Inventing Modernity in Medieval European Thought, ca. 1100–ca. 1550
Author: Cary J. Nedermann
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2019-01-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 3110626675

One of the most challenging problems in the history of Western ideas stems from the emergence of Modernity out of the preceding period of the Latin Middle Ages. This volume develops and extends the insights of the noted scholar Thomas M. Izbicki into the so-called medieval/modern divide. The contributors include a wide array of eminent international scholars from the fields of History, Theology, Philosophy, and Political Science, all of whom explore how medieval ideas framed and shaped the thought of later centuries. This sometimes involved the evolution of intellectual principles associated with the definition and imposition of religious orthodoxy. Also addressed is the Great Schism in the Roman Church that set into question the foundations of ecclesiology. In the same era, philosophical and theoretical innovations reexamined conventional beliefs about metaphysics, epistemology and political life, perhaps best encapsulated by the fifteenth-century philosopher, theologian and political theorist Nicholas of Cusa.

Dante: The Divine Comedy

Dante: The Divine Comedy
Author: Robin Kirkpatrick
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 140
Release: 2004-01-19
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780521539944

In this accessible critical introduction to Dante's Divine Comedy Robin Kirkpatrick principally focuses on Dante as a poet and storyteller. He addresses important questions such as Dante's attitude towards Virgil, and demonstrates how an early work such as the Vita nuova is a principal source of the literary achievement of the Comedy. His detailed reading reveals how the great narrative poem explores the relationship that Dante believed to exist between God as creator of the universe and the human being as a creature of God.

Inferno: The Divine Comedy I

Inferno: The Divine Comedy I
Author: Dante
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 722
Release: 2006-03-30
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0141916443

Describing Dante's descent into Hell midway through his life with Virgil as a guide, Inferno depicts a cruel underworld in which desperate figures are condemned to eternal damnation for committing one or more of seven deadly sins. As he descends through nine concentric circles of increasingly agonising torture, Dante encounters doomed souls including the pagan Aeneas, the liar Odysseus, the suicide Cleopatra, and his own political enemies, damned for their deceit. Led by leering demons, the poet must ultimately journey with Virgil to the deepest level of all. For it is only by encountering Satan, in the heart of Hell, that he can truly understand the tragedy of sin.

Reading Dante: From Here to Eternity

Reading Dante: From Here to Eternity
Author: Prue Shaw
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 355
Release: 2014-02-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0871407809

The best and most eloquent introduction to Dante for our time. Prue Shaw is one of the world's foremost authorities on Dante. Written with the general reader in mind, Reading Dante brings her knowledge to bear in an accessible yet expert introduction to his great poem. This is far more than an exegesis of Dante’s three-part Commedia. Shaw communicates the imaginative power, the linguistic skill and the emotional intensity of Dante’s poetry—the qualities that make the Commedia perhaps the greatest literary work of all time and not simply a medieval treatise on morality and religion. The book provides a graphic account of the complicated geography of Dante's version of the afterlife and a sure guide to thirteenth-century Florence and the people and places that influenced him. At the same time it offers a literary experience that lifts the reader into the universal realms of poetry and mythology, creating links not only to the classical world of Virgil and Ovid but also to modern art and poetry, the world of T. S. Eliot, Seamus Heaney and many others. Dante's questions are our questions: What is it to be a human being? How should we judge human behavior? What matters in life and in death? Reading Dante helps the reader to understand Dante’s answers to these timeless questions and to see how surprisingly close they sometimes are to modern answers. Reading Dante is an astonishingly lyrical work that will appeal to both those who’ve never read the Commedia and those who have. It underscores Dante's belief that poetry can change human lives.

The Rose and Geryon

The Rose and Geryon
Author: Gabriella I. Baika
Publisher: CUA Press
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2014
Genre: History
ISBN: 0813226090

The Rose and Geryon examines patterns of verbal behavior in works by Jean de Meun and Dante (with a focus on the Romance of the Rose and the Divine Comedy) in relationship with the most influential systems of verbal sins in the Middle Ages, systems elaborated by William Peraldus, Thomas Aquinas, Domenico Cavalca, and Laurent of Orléans. The book begins with a presentation of these four systems, and from there proceeds to analyze Jean de Meun's Testament as a possible source of influence for the Divine Comedy and take a closer look at Dante's prose works in search for a comprehensive theory of sinful speech. Furthermore Baika discusses verbal transgressions such as flattery, evil counsel, double talk, sowing of discord, and falsifying of words, under the heading Lingua dolosa "The Guileful Tongue," and the relationship between violence and the poetic discourse. The myriad ways in which the two iconic poets of medieval France and Italy absorb the tradition of peccata linguae in their works prove that abusive speech was not the exclusive sphere of interest of the ecclesiastical writers; secular poetry in the vernacular enriched in original ways the medieval debate on verbal vices. The Rose and Geryon addresses scholars and students of French and Italian literatures, as well as readers interested in ethics and women's studies.

Dante: A Very Short Introduction

Dante: A Very Short Introduction
Author: Peter Hainsworth
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 157
Release: 2015-02-26
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0191507679

In this Very Short Introduction, Peter Hainsworth and David Robey take a different approach to Dante, by examining the main themes and issues that run through all of his work, ranging from autobiography, to understanding God and the order of the universe. In doing so, they highlight what has made Dante a vital point of reference for modern writers and readers, both inside and outside Italy. They emphasize the distinctive and dynamic interplay in Dante's writing between argument, ideas, and analysis on the one hand, and poetic imagination on the other. Dante was highly concerned with the political and intellectual issues of his time, demonstrated most powerfully in his notorious work, The Divine Comedy. Tracing the tension between the medieval and modern aspects, Hainsworth and Robey provide a clear insight into the meaning of this masterpiece of world literature. They highlight key figures and episodes in the poem, bringing out the originality and power of Dante's writing to help readers understand the problems that Dante wanted his audience to confront but often left up to the reader to resolve. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Dante and Aquinas

Dante and Aquinas
Author: Christopher Ryan
Publisher: Ubiquity Press
Total Pages: 170
Release: 2013-05-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1909188115

Christopher Ryan's study of Dante and Aquinas, touching on issues of nature and grace, of explicit and implicit faith, and of desire and destiny, is intended to mark the difference between them in key areas of theological sensibility. Re-shaped and revised by John Took on the basis of papers made available to him from Christopher Ryan's estate, it seeks to deepen our understanding of one of the great cultural encounters in European letters.

The Seven Deadly Sins

The Seven Deadly Sins
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2007-03-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 9047429451

This volume presents a selection of essays undertaken by participants in an NEH Summer Seminar in 2004 on the topic of the seven deadly sins, viewed individually and as a whole, as part of the Begriffsgeschichte of the Middle Ages and beyond in which concepts are constructed within the cultural milieus in which they function. The essays in the first part study the political and social ethics of medieval communities. In the second part, the institutional imperatives within the Church of formulating and teaching about the capital vices are the focus of research. In the final section, the contributions deal with ways in which secular artists and authors (in particular, Dante) contribute to the cultural construction of the vices. Contributors include: Dwight D. Allman, Bridget K. Balint, V. S. Benfell III, Dallas G. Denery II, Laura D. Gelfand, Susan E. Hill, Holly Johnson, Hilaire Kallendorf, John Kitchen, Rhonda L. McDaniel, Richard Newhauser, Thomas Parisi, and Derrick G. Pitard.